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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083674">Shadows and Shades</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit'>Cosmic_Biscuit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>To Fall and Rise [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff and Angst, Gen, Introspection</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 02:15:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>425</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fixing the damage her grandfather left in The Mists is a more difficult task than Aurene anticipated, but not for the reason she expected.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>To Fall and Rise [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1285994</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shadows and Shades</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There were many kinds of ghosts in the Mists, for the Mists stretched infinitely wide and encompassed many worlds. </p>
<p>There were the expected ones. The long since or recently dead beings whom, for their own myriad reasons, refused the pull of their afterlives. </p>
<p>There were the curious ones. Those who never had living bodies, but were living <em>ideas, </em>abandoned or reshaped into something no longer resembling themselves. </p>
<p>And then there were…</p>
<p>As the rift finally closed with a hiss and crackle, Aurene inhaled deeply, then let it out in a slow sigh of relief. A few moments more, and she had calmed enough to uncoil her body out of its tense spring and stretch the strain out of her wings.</p>
<p>The shades that the rifts generated were getting… perhaps not <em>worse, </em>in the objective sense, but certainly more <em>painful. </em></p>
<p>In the very beginning, she had been seeing the possibilities of events ages old.</p>
<p>An Orr that had never been sent to the bottom of the sea.</p>
<p>A Kryta where the White Mantle’s iron grip had never been broken. </p>
<p>She had come across Mursaat that still lived and Centaurs that had been driven to extinction.</p>
<p>Asura and Skritt alike where neither race had made it to the surface.</p>
<p>Charr that had effectively taken over the world.</p>
<p>Dwarves that still remained flesh.</p>
<p>The changes, the differences, had always been unsettling, but she had taken comfort in the fact that whatever instances had shaped these shades had been long, long before her time. </p>
<p>But it hadn’t taken her long to realize that with each rift she closed, time was catching up, and <em>that </em>had been when the dread set in. </p>
<p>Her egg mother and brother, free and happy in the wake of Destiny’s Edge successfully slaying her grandfather.</p>
<p>Her hatch mother and aunt, her <em>champions</em>, consumed and transmuted by the will of Mordremoth.</p>
<p>Her claws dug into the rock beneath her as she stared at nothing, trying to banish the last from her mind. </p>
<p>Another sharp inhale and she closed her eyes, reaching out.</p>
<p>
  <em>There.</em>
</p>
<p>Twin sisters sat at a table in a Divinity’s Reach cafe. Her mother rolled her eyes at something her aunt was saying, yet laughed at it all the same. They were content, and most of all, they were <em>safe.</em></p>
<p>Aurene took that image and nestled it into her heart where she hoped it would shield her as she took flight towards the next rift.</p>
<p>After all, there were many kinds of ghosts in the Mists.</p>
<p>And some of them were quite terrifying indeed.</p>
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